Part 1

Part 2

Well if you think that you should be yapin’ your trap on here, this your chance sausage fingers. If not, you’re bummed cuz that’s what this whole post is about. So anyways, a while ago people started complaining that the download speed of the mp3s on this blog site was suckin’ balls, shit was taking hours to download… it’s a fair complaint even if the music is FREE. So I announced last week that I wasn’t going to post mp3s anymore. Actually to be honest, it had more to do with the fact that I was just getting bored writing shit for this place. Since then I’ve had quite a few people offer free fast hosting locations for the mp3s, I had no idea there were so many nice people out there! It’s a Beautiful world we live in, FOR YOU! Problem is… I’m still pretty bored of doing this… Here’s the part where thinking you should write for this blog comes in… The deal is… If you aren’t a total idiot, have pretty similar taste in music as the people who’ve written for this site (if you don’t know what we like, check the archives freak), don’t mind zero point zero payment in return for your effort and you can write as well or better as the average 6th grader… then email me a list of your ten favorite records of all time, ten of your current favorite records and two possible blog entries to traviskeller@gmail.com. Don’t fuckin’ email me mp3s either, that shit sucks donkey dicks man. And we can always use hosts, so if you know of some hosting space we could use… let me know. Oh and check out this Devo song… FOR YOU! NOT ME!

(Download - Devo - "Beautiful World")

*By the way, this thing downloads fast!

Also… in the next week or so I’ll have some limited edition prints of my photography for sale, if you’re interested email at the email above.

Devo will forever be one of my all-time favorite bands. But, for reasons more significant than their innovative and infectious music alone. In fact, Devo was the foundation of my grad school thesis based upon the notion of pop culture subversion. Like the Beatles (who were obviously far more successful at rallying the zeitgeist of a naive youth culture to make massive changes), Devo dramatically impacted and changed our culture en-mass by knowing the only way to deliver a message that’s truly meaningful is to express it ways that are utterly  beyond meaning. That is, Devo’s lyricists Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale managed to write songs that sounded as lyrically pedestrian as all other contemporary pop

music, but which spoke a message far more surreptitious and revolutionary. That’s a tough task, to pass the LCD bean-counters of the major labels (in the pre-Nirvana early-80s mind you.) Nonetheless, Devo had at least one hit album. Unfortunately, very few listeners were actually thinking and interpreting in the way that the band had hoped. Cynical songs like "Freedom of Choice" being about our own psychosocial deception and "Whip It" being about our sado-masochistic need to control and be controlled were taken as literal anthems. Regardless, a band of nerds from Akron, OH taking their name in celebratory/mockery of a bizarre pseudo-science book written by a presumed Nazi-in-hiding German ex-pat broke into the Top 10. That’s impressive by any stretch of the imagination.

But, perhaps what I also admire about Devo was that the band has never quite acquired "hip" status amongst the indie-rock elite (i.e. those who’ve essentially inherited their neo-hippie luddite, anti-corporate, trust-funded and outmoded values from dear old dad, not dada.) Devo were true overmen — they joined and even embraced the system that they despised and subsequently transcended it by outwitting the shills who ran the business. All that without ever needing to play the tired role of angry rebels.

I’ll shut up for now and let these songs speak for themselves. But, suffice to say, I think each song has a radically significant message that speaks beyond simplistic "left or right" political values, or whatever other anarcho-radical adolescent fantasies might be floating out there in the ether that you might require from music. Don’t ask what the songs are about. You might get what they were thinking, or you might think something on your own, either way, the point is made. Devo only supplies the color for the palette. The painting is yours to create.

This version of "Uncontrollable Urge" is a live recording from May 1977 at Max’s Kansas City in NYC that’s much faster and more energized than the album version. "Going Under" (click here for lyrics) is a sinister song about various types of seduction from their 1981 New Traditionalists album. "Peek A Boo" is from their 1982 album Oh No! It’s Devo.

(Download - "Uncontrollable Urge" live)

(Download - "Going Under")

(Download - "Peek-A-Boo!")

You gotta hand it to fundamentalist Xians for their sheer, bold-faced perverse gall. This track by truly takes the cake for the typical asinine, presumptious attitude of anti-abortionists. Listen to the song all the way through — the chorus is the real sickening and simpering moneyshot.

And, now that Sandra Day O’Conner is retiring from the Supreme Court and W will likely appoint a very conservative Jesusland judge (but probably a woman who "understands the abortion issue" and wants to take away the right to choose), the disgustingly judgemental attitude of anti-abortionists conveyed in this song becomes all the more pertinent when considering how blindly, childishly black and white they view the extremely complicated and emotionally draining decision it is to have an abortion.

I got this one from a link to a great site called ShowandTellMusic.com featuring weird/funny/outsider album art and music.

(Download - "Markie Diary")

Yeah, I changed my mind and moved the "Music 101" stuff to it’s own section, you can find it at http://www.buddyhead.com/music101/ from now on. I just figured that they’d get lost on here and in the long run it’ll be easier to organize it all this way. Whatever. It’s there now. Bye I’m going to see fucking Batman.

During the late 80s/early 90s grunge boom emerged an overlooked/under-rated  lil ol band from Jacksonville, Florida called Rein Sanction.  A ‘Jimi Hendrix Experience’ inspired 3-piece consisting of two mysterious, longhaired, wide-eyed brothers by the name of Mark and Brannon Gentry (guitar and drums, respectively). Rein Sanction played a heavy miasma of psyche guitar rock akin to Neil Young’s “Arc/Weld” era or early Dinosaur Jr. at their most challenging moments. The trio released 4 records, two of them gracing the aforementioned Sub Pop label. Their 1st for the Seattle label was the blissed out/tripped out 1991 classic (in my mind) entitled “Broc’s Cabin.” A true psychedelic, guitar heavy journey. Long songs based on wicked guitar grooves, insidious melodies and heavy tones.

Their sonic exploration continued on their Jack Endino produced follow up and swansong record for Sub Pop entitled ‘Mariposa.’ Unfortunately not many heard or took to Rein Sanction’s sound. Critics and fans alike seemed to dismiss them. Consequently, Sub Pop eventually ended up letting them go. They disappeared and later re-emerged for a brief moment and another record (Email me for personal accounts of this resurfacing), only to vaporize with out a trace.

I can’t help but thinking with the newly found interest in ‘psyche rock’ with such bands as “Dead Meadow” or “Comets On Fire” that Rein Sanction may have been ahead of their time? Regardless, they were on time for me and still are. Check em out.

Fan site: http://www.reinsanction.net/index.html

(Download - "F Train")

Discovering what you like about the prolific psychheit group Popul Vuh is as much an investment of time, energy and emotion as finding what you appreciate about life itself, but it can be equally as fulfilling. The German "Krautrock" prog-psych-soundtrack-new-age-folk musical cult is a fitting precursor to the lesser, wannabe "outsider" art-folk hipster scene populated by Devendra Banhart, Johanna Newsom, Entrance, Black Mountain, et al. However, put Popul Vuh in context with the regressive, conservative German culture of the early 70’s and its music becomes all the more impressive. This track, "Dort Ist Der Weg" is perhaps a highlight of Popul Vuh’s synergy of Far East and Western folk traditions into a powerful, droning force — one lifted shamelessly by Michael Gira during mid-period SWANS — that embodies the grace and depth of its musical forrays into nether regions of music’s ability to infect the mind AND body. Its name comes from the central text of Mayan culture, and its music is an exploration into repetition, attrition and musical drone that is unsurpassed without aid of extremely debilitating psychedelic drugs and a true interest in exploring our mental netherwords via nervous circuitry. It may sound like intense Enya in the wrong context. So, you might want to sit down with a full album to fully appreciate Popul Vuh. But, anyone familiar with Comus and similar eviscerating psychfolk fuckery will love this and other Popul Vuh songs. Florian Fricke, its main composer wrote several scores for Werner Herzog films, but the oeuvre of Popul Vuh’s collective noises are far more incredible given proper attention in the cozy confines ov your own dreamstates.

(Download - "Dort Ist Der Weg")